Quote from: izzikiorage on October 23, 2017, 14:10

So i guess the smart idea is to give up? Or do we try harder?

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Yes, the most common answer by successful people on the question "What made you successful?" is:

 "I gave up".

Indeed.
But the real secret is recognising early enough in the cycle (long before the horse is even moribund) that there's no point expending more energy on flogging it and moving on to something more profitable and/or satisfying.

If I wanted to make photography my "job" I think I would only consider stock as a back up to more lucrative work....

I would do this (and I do) with any job, online or not. Diversification is very important and can be a crucial safety net.

Most successful people do this too, like actors actually making more money from real estate investments or supporting startups.

The obvious first step is of course to not just sell at one site, since that makes you very vulnerable, but also doing micro, macro, print, real life work, instagram, YouTube, the stock market, real estate, etc. etc. Images, footage, illustrations, music, sound...

Of course, the drawback is dividing your time between all of these activities, but I believe finding a good balance is possible.

Personally, I have maybe around 50 different "jobs", if you count each place I sell something or do something that earns money (like YouTube). Of course, 1-3 sites are big earners, and losing one of those over night would not be great, but I would still make a living.

Quote from: Pauws99 on October 24, 2017, 03:47

If I wanted to make photography my "job" I think I would only consider stock as a back up to more lucrative work....If you have the people/network skills there's potentially much better things to be doing particularly in wealthy countries.

In the US apparently so, based on some Creative Live videos I see!
I see you're in the UK, so the difference must be vast here too. Round about here, it seems to be impossible for social/industrial photographers to make a sustainable business; people can't, or choose not to, pay the money.
Three successive togs in my town went out of business as soon as their start up grants/allowances/tax breaks/whatever stopped. The third one in particular seemed to have watched a lot of these USian Creative Live tutorials I've seen and was trying out a lot of ideas I'd seen on there for growing a business, but as I'd guessed, these ideas don't cross borders.

The only 'tog in my area who has been in business more than five years (over 20) actually makes most of her money from framing other peoples pictures.
So, diversification!

I think the biggest area is in training/workshops and the like. I don't think the conventional photography business is going to cut it.

Quote from: izzikiorage on October 23, 2017, 14:10

So i guess the smart idea is to give up? Or do we try harder?

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3003 using Tapatalk

Yes, the most common answer by successful people on the question "What made you successful?" is:

 "I gave up".

A valid point. But not every successful person is currently doing whatever it is they stopped doing, before starting to do the thing they became successful at... so sometimes you have to give something up if it's not working.

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again... then give up if it's still not working." should be the correct saying.

One more question then, how long did it take you before you were able to earn what your photo gear (camera, first 2 lenses) is worth